“Certaynly His Noble Sayenges Can I Not Amende”: Thomas Usk and Troilus and Criseyde

Thomas Usk's Testament of Love is a text written in the shadow of Chaucer, a text that alternately allies itself with, and then distances itself from, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Usk's careful use of Troilus and Criseyde reveals the way in which Chaucer's poetry could be deployed in the 1380s and put to specific uses, both political and personal. The editors of Usk's Testament, Walter Skeat and R. A. Shoaf, have both listed passages taken from Troilus and Criseyde and recontextualized by Usk, one of the earliest known readers of Troilus and Criseyde. ¹ Here, I am interested in examining what Usk does with these passages, and in the effects of his recontextualizations. As Paul Strohm has recently commented, source study, the study of "textual prehistories," can offer "insights not to be achieved by other means." ² Indeed, a study of the archaeology of Usk's text yields manifold insights into his textual strategies, his attempts to self-fashion, and his complex reactions to the influence of his magisterial contemporary.

It seems probable that Chaucer, as a prolific poet and royal servant, occupied the kind of position—both in literary and in political terms—to which Usk aspired. ³ It is therefore unsurprising that Chaucer is inscribed into the heart of Usk's text as Usk tries to write himself into a Chaucerian textual community, a community which we might imagine as encompassing men such as John Clanvowe, Lewis Clifford, Philip la Vache and John Montagu, all royal servants (chamber knights) and owners, writers, or readers of books. ⁴ Such a community would be very attractive to someone trying to gain a royal appointment, and also trying to compose a literary work. Love—Usk's "Lady Philosophy" figure—calls Chaucer "myne owne trewe servaunt the noble philosophical poete in Englissh whiche evermore hym besyeth and travayleth right sore my name to encrease" (Book 3, lines 559-61). Chaucer, like Usk, is depicted as a servant of Love, participating in the same general project as Usk. Usk imagines that they are both clients of the same patron: this is particularly appropriate as Usk is seeking the favor of Richard II, and Chaucer had long been an esquire of the king's household. As Love is here referring to "a treatise that he made of my servant Troylus" (Book 3, line 563) and explaining that she will not discuss certain questions in this text since they are dealt with by Chaucer, Usk specifically places his own text in the same ambit as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. In this eulogy to Chaucer, Love claims that "certaynly his noble sayenges can I not amende" (Book 3, line 564). In fact, the Testament is punctuated by manifold quotations from Troilus and Criseyde that have been altered and deployed in a new context, as Usk does seek to "amende" Chaucer's work. Troilus and Criseyde, as is well known, finds much of its inspiration in Boethius, and Boethian ideas are often transferred to a context of earthly romantic love, while Pandarus apes the role of Lady Philosophy. Usk then takes parts of Troilus and Criseyde and inserts them into his pseudo-Boethian Testament, a text that has pretensions to consolatio status ⁵ but is also driven by decidedly worldly motives (i.e., Usk's desire to win friends and influence people). ⁶ Usk's deployment of Chaucer's just-written text is therefore a fascinating demonstration both of the way that Troilus and Criseyde was received and of the way that it was manipulated.

Usk frequently lifts quotations from Troilus and Criseyde that refer to Troilus's sexual love for Criseyde (or Criseyde's for Troilus) and uses them to describe his own spiritual love for "Margarite," the summum bonum. The Testament thus strongly engages with—and indeed comments on—the common interplay between religious and romantic terminology...